What does climate change mean for skiing in Colorado?

First, the good news.

“Colorado is going to be the home of skiing for a long time, the epicenter for snow sports in the U.S.,” says Keith Musselman, an assistant professor studying mountain snow at University of Colorado’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

Musselman is also a skier and snowboarder. He’s all too aware of the bad news.

A warming climate threatens his sport, slowly but surely, according to long-term projections. Those were detailed in a paper he co-authored in 2021, published in the journal Nature.

Current models show “substantial snow in the Rocky Mountains by the end of the century,” Musselman says, “but you’re going to start seeing places look more like the Pacific Northwest.”

Colorado’s high elevations “essentially buy us time,” Musselman says. While cold temperatures at ski bases above 10,000 feet will continue to meet storms tracking from the coast, turning water into snow, data show lower bases closer to the ocean might not be so fortunate.

Instead of powder, slush.

“We are a little less vulnerable to warming than some other places, like the Sierra Nevadas or the Cascades,” says Peter Goble, a climatologist at Colorado Climate Center. “We build a cooler snowpack.”

Still, he says, that snowpack won’t be totally immune at the current rate of warming.

“Along with warmer winters comes a reduction in overall snowpack, a shorter snow season and more potential for rain-on-snow events, particularly at lower elevations,” Goble says.

That means an impact on the state’s precious powder, he says. “It’s likely that, especially in the shoulder season — I’m thinking mostly about spring, say April and March — that if the climate warms as it’s expected to warm, we could see a lot more events that are more of the heavy, wet snow variety.”

As an industry, Musselman says Colorado officials should be thinking about small ski hills across the Midwest and East Coast. Those are part of the “feeder system,” as he calls it, responsible for instilling a passion and inspiring people to visit or move to bigger mountains.

“Those places at lower elevations are likely to not be sustainable,” Musselman says. “That’s a real hit to the ski industry, losing skier numbers.”

Skiing far from represents the greater threat of climate change on a global level, Musselman emphasizes. And, the way he sees it, the potential changes to terrain do not represent the greater threat to Colorado’s sporting scene.

“If (ski areas) have to close weeks earlier and/or the skier days and visitors are starting to be reduced, that has an impact on the community,” he says. “It’s less about the number of days we’re going to be skiing slush instead of powder. What does it mean for those working at the burrito shop or the pizza shop, or those who make snow for a living or drive snow cats?”

And then there’s what scientists see as the most immediate threat to the industry.

In an era of hotter and bigger wildfires, many forested resorts sit in the crosshairs. Sierra at Tahoe served as a warning case last season; the resort opened after the Caldor fire wrecked buildings and destroyed trees that were central to the overall experience.

Indeed, a warming climate is “our big, looming issue,” says Adrienne Saia Isaac, marketing and communications director with National Ski Areas Association.

She considered the pandemic that forced industry competitors around the world to combine resources and work toward an operating path.

“It was the ski industry collaborating to help combat a larger problem,” Isaac says. “We’re going to need to do that again when it comes to climate.”

Ultimately, scientists say, it will take political willpower on a global scale to cut greenhouse gas emissions. In the meantime, ski areas are investing in high-powered, automated snowmaking. They’re looking to higher terrain and north-facing slopes where snow has a better chance to hold.

The proliferation of season passes with access to several resorts worldwide seems to serve as another “hedge,” Goble says.

“Given how variable things are year to year, it’s likely that somewhere on one of those big group passes will have a good year,” he says. “However, one negative that I think might come with that is you may end up with more crowds if this is one of the better places to ski in the middle of the century. I think that’s a potential impact that gets discussed a little less.”